Page 85 of Cruel Devil

“I didn’t tell you anything!” Her face scrunches up, then her eyes fly wide open. “Did I?”

“Relax. I’m just trying to figure out what the hell you’re doing here.” I frown at her. “Do you want more alcohol, sweetheart?”

“Ew. Don’t call me that either.” She considers this for the longest time, then shakes her head. “Booze won’t help. Just need…someone.”

“Need how?” A smile finds its way onto my mouth, and Andy stares at it suspiciously.

“Holy cow,” she mutters. “Bad idea. This—this is a bad idea.” She tries to get onto her hands and knees—I presume so she can crawl off the bed—but I lean over and grab her arm.

“I’m not going to jump you. You’ve made it pretty clear that you’re not interested.”

I can count the amount of times women have rejected me on one hand. Although a few of them hadn’t spoken English, so it might just have been a communication problem.

Rejection has never hurt this much before, though.

“Oh?” Her surprise is insulting, like she genuinely didn’t think I had it in me.

I get up, tightening my belt as I stalk over to the coffee machine on the other side of the bed. “Let’s get some caffeine in you?”

“How’s that going to get me to sleep?”

I spin around, sighing as I run a hand through my hair.

“Booze or weed are the only things that help me get some shut eye.”

“Weed?”

I stop with my hand on the machine’s start button. “Yeah.” I glance at her over my shoulder. “You keen?”

She rolls onto her back, staring up at my ceiling for a moment before lifting her head with obvious effort. “Never done weed.”

I snort. “You don’t do weed. It’s not meth.”

My fucking robe keeps slipping open, so I have to wrangle it closed over my stomach as I head for the other side of the room. Andy watches me with a small frown between her eyes until I disappear inside my walk-in closet to fetch my bag of party tricks.

I come back and climb onto the bed, sitting cross-legged against the headboard with the small suitcase flipped open on my lap.

Andy tries to look at me over her shoulder, and then comes leopard-crawling up the bed to my side, folding one of my pillows in half to rest her head on. She stares blearily at the contents, then blows out air in what I assume was supposed to be a whistle.

“Holy cow, that’s a lot of drugs.”

“Thought you didn’t do drugs.”

“I know what Oxy and Xanax look like.”

She picks up one of many bags of weed. I get bored of smoking the same shit all the time, so I like having a few strains on hand.

“And marijuana.”

I snort a laugh, and cover it up with a cough when she gives me the stink eye. “Allergies.”

She picks up a bag of white powder. “What’s this?”

“No, no, mi fresita. Coke’s only for grown ups,” I say as I snatch it out of her hand.

She scowls up at me as I sprinkle some weed down the crease of a gold-leaf rolling paper. If this is really her first time, then I’ll make sure she gets blazed in style.

“What did you just call me?”

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